In Tepid Times for Tech Stocks, LinkedIn Still Expected to Perform

It has been a rough year on the market for buying tech stocks. Zynga’s worth has been reduced to a shadow of what it once was. And we all know how that whole Facebook IPO went.

And then there’s LinkedIn, one company in the minority of consistently strong tech market performances over the last few years. Since the company debuted on the NYSE nearly two years ago, it has spent most of its time on the market moving in an upward trajectory (save a nasty period in mid-2011).

This afternoon’s expectations are little different. The Street consensus is positive on its earnings report, with an average estimate of $279.5 million in revenue — nearly an 11 percent quarterly sequential increase — and an EPS of 19 cents.

Why so bullish? Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia attributes some of his positive outlook to new products debuted over the last quarter, citing an increase in overall user engagement.

“We believe new features such as Professional Insights (ability to follow thought leaders) and Linkedin Today (a social news curation product that provides members with news most relevant to them) would have helped increase engagement,” Bhatia wrote in a research note to investors this week.

Coupled with the site’s overall design refresh last fall, LinkedIn is focused on its engagement issue. The company saw a 2 percent sequential decline in page views last quarter (down to 9.4 billion, which is certainly no slouch). Part of the problem is the perception that LinkedIn remains an online resume, something you update with your most recent career information and then don’t return to. (Or “set it and forget it,” as Ron Popeil might say.)

Obviously that’s not what LinkedIn wants, and it has beefed up its efforts to increase engagement over the past year. Now users are prompted to leave feedback on each others’ profiles in the form of “endorsements,” essentially a “Like” for someone’s ability to do something (I, for example, get endorsed for journalism by my connections). Or take the little profile completeness progress bar on the right-hand side; LinkedIn wants you to keep coming back, to add content to your page, and to stay up to date on what others are doing.

That’s not an easy feat. Perhaps, as every other Web company seems to believe these days, the answer lies in mobile. LinkedIn’s unique mobile-only visitors jumped to 25 percent in Q3, nearly double that from a year-ago quarter. If the company can continue to bolster its mobile apps on Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone, we could see that mobile growth sustained. I’d keep an eye out for mobile numbers in today’s earnings release.

We’ll have coverage of LinkedIn’s numbers this afternoon.

Confirmed: BlackBerry to Stop Selling Smartphones in Japan

Looks like the global rollout of BlackBerry’s new flagship smartphones will not extend to the entire globe. Certainly it won’t include Japan.

Confirming news first reported by the Nikkei, a BlackBerry spokeswoman told AllThingsD Thursday that the company is indeed pulling out of the Japanese market — at least for the time being.

“We are in the process of launching BlackBerry 10 globally in key markets, and we are seeing positive demand for the BlackBerry Z10 in countries where it has already launched. Japan is not a major market for BlackBerry, and we have no plans to launch BlackBerry 10 devices there at this time,” spokeswoman Amy McDowell said. “However, we will continue to support BlackBerry customers in Japan.”

The company declined to comment on its plans for other non-critical markets.

A surprising move for BlackBerry, though perhaps it shouldn’t be. Over the past few years, BlackBerry’s market share in Japan has suffered a decline so precipitous that it no longer even ranks by name on comScore’s survey of the top smartphone platforms in country. As of June 2012, BlackBerry was lumped into the research firm’s “Other” category which itself claims only a 0.4 percent share. At the time the survey was conducted, 24 million people in Japan owned smartphones. So, while the country may not be a major market for BlackBerry, it is very much a major smartphone market.

Developing …

BlackBerry Bounceback Beat Back

Research In Motion has a new name, a new operating system and a pair of new handsets, but it’s still got the same old sinking stock price.

On Thursday, shares of the smartphone pioneer continued the downward slide they began the day before, during the unveiling of its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 OS and handsets. BlackBerry shares opened down 10 percent and, at $13.21, they’re down nearly 4 percent as I write this.

Why the pessimism after what seemed to be a fairly successful launch event? The estimated arrival dates of the first of BlackBerry’s BB10 phones. Though the touchscreen Z10 debuted in the U.K. and will ship in Canada and the United Arab Emirates next week, it won’t hit the U.S. market until March. And the Q10, a BB10 handset with a physical keyboard, won’t be available anywhere until April. Later-than-expected ship dates imply smaller-than-hoped-for unit shipments, and the Street clearly finds that disappointing.

Beyond that, there are concerns about the BlackBerry ecosystem and addressable market that I mentioned earlier this morning. That said, BB10 is a vast improvement over its predecessor, and has certainly closed the gap with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. It’s not hard to imagine it appealing to BlackBerry diehards looking for a next-generation device. But the legacy user base is an easy mark. Those BlackBerry users who have defected to iOS and Android over the last few years will be a far harder sell.

BlackBerry Z10 With 4G LTE Now Available On EE

We heard earlier today that Vodafone are offering RIM’s new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone on their network in the UK, and now the UK’s first 4G LTE network, EE has announced that the device is available on their network.

EE are offering the new BlackBerry Z10 for 49.99 when you sign up to a 24 month contract that will cost you 41 a month, they have also said that any devices ordered will be delivered in 10 days.

RIM hasn’t forgotten its roots, launches BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 for businesses

RIM is all set to unveil its new BlackBerry 10 devices at the end of January, hopeful that they will make a splash among consumers. Despite that focus, the company hasn’t forgotten its core enterprise roots, and it launched its new BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 (BES 10) today.

The company first released details of the new system for businesses at the end of August, promising that it will launch in the first quarter of 2013, and it has delivered on its word. RIM is coming under increasing pressure for corporate customers from Apple and Samsung — which invested in enterprise-focused Fixmo this week — and its new enterprise service consolidates all of its services for business into one place, while also allowing easier management of non-BlackBerry devices.

RIM was the main target of a Samsung ad which aired this week and poked fun at the fact that many companies are limited to using BlackBerry devices for ‘work phones’. It has set out to address that and, while it has long had technologies allowing other devices to use BES, it has made management of multi-platform devices a central part of BES 10.

With BES 10, everything from the company's mobile device management (MDM) to its security, infrastructure, and app management products come together into a "single unified web-based console."

Other key features that the company is stressing include application management for apps — both internal and public — via BlackBerry World for Work, improvements to over-the-air activation for devices and ‘enhanced’ IT policies.

BES is available on a 60-day trial without cost, while existing customer can upgrade their software through a range of packages.

RIM’s focus on content for BlackBerry 10 appears to be going well and its final Port-A-Thon to encourage developers to port iOS and Android apps to the platform saw more than 19,000 submissions last weekend. That volume has forced the Canadian firm to push back the deadlines for its developer incentive programs.

This walk-through shows the BES 10 product working, and includes it being set up with a BlackBerry 10 alpha device.

Headline image via Honou

BlackBerry 10 adds so many features that so few people want

“RIM CEO and possible Bond villain Thorstein Heins gave the world its best look at BlackBerry 10 today; while previous demos had focused on the camera and keyboard, this morning focused on even more everyday features,” Brian Barrett reports for Gizmodo. “It looks like it does some things very well-and that they’re not the things you’d care about.”

“This new peek, combined with what we saw earlier this year, gives the impression of a very competent mobile operating system. But it’s also one that we’re still months and months away from, during which time more and more companies will switch on over to iPhones and Androids and, with Windows 8 synergies kicking in just next month, WP8,” Barrett writes. “And more than that, even if it were to arrive today - even if it had arrived last fall - BB10 seems to serve very few masters. It’s a great OS for browbeaten, unorganized, over-caffeinated, multilingual business persons sure. But how many of us does that really describe? Outside, that is, of RIM’s own CEO.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: There will be no BlackBerry 11.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "John" for the heads up.]